Economy Needs ‘More Building Blocks’: Strategist

The economy is going to continue to get more difficult from here and investors need the market to show that it can sustain the kinds of moves that stocks have made, said Christopher Zook, chairman and CIO of CAZ Investments. (See his sector recommendations, below.)

“We need to see more building blocks to see markets go higher,” Zook told CNBC. “There’s a lot of people with cash on the sidelines, there’s a lot of performance anxiety and right now, we’re beginning to see people panic from missing the move.”

He said investors who are buying “for the sake of buying,” because they’re afraid of being left behind, is unsustainable.

“[Investments] have got to be based on good economic fundamentals for us to be going substantially higher,” he said.

“If this economy is going to recover, that area is going to rally most substantially from these levels,” he said.

“And if the economy does not continue to recover and if we get a false start, then those stocks are going to pull back. So anybody who is long on those positions need to be so with stops underneath or other protective measures to protect themselves in the event that this is a false start.”